THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 7 



His perplexity at this strange affair cannot well 

 be described. The familiar voice of his mate 

 would induce him to approach, but that squeak- 

 ing, chattering horn was a feature which he 

 could not comprehend. He traced the sounds, 

 however, to the source from which they came, 

 and failing to find his mate, thrust his arm into 

 the horn quite up to his shoulder, then withdrew 

 it, and peeped into it again and again. The ex- 

 pressions of his face were indeed a study. I 

 then secured a few sounds of his voice and deliv- 

 ered them to the female, who showed some signs 

 of interest, but the record was very imperfect 

 and her manner seemed quite indifferent. In 

 this experiment for the first time in the history 

 of language was the simian speech reduced to 

 record, and while the results were not fully up 

 to my hopes, they served to inspire me to fur- 

 ther efforts to find the fountain-head from which 

 flows out the great river of human speech. 

 Having satisfied myself that each one recognized 

 the sound made by the other when delivered 

 through the phonograph, I felt rewarded for my 

 labor and assured of the possibility of learning 

 the language of monkeys. The faith of others 

 was strengthened also, and while this experiment 



